Question

Anyone use Phillips Hue bulbs in a kid's room to help with bedtime? Our kid's room has a ceiling fan, so no dimmer of course - but I'm thinking that maybe a Hue hub added to my SmartThings with some color bulbs might help. We have one of those Hatch sound machines and night lights - ("when it's red, stay in bed") - but night time routines aren't perfect. I'm thinking I could have the bulbs change to a more night-time friendly color and slowly dim over a half hour period. I'm just looking for some feedback, making sure that I can do what I'm looking to do (aka, can I tell Google Home "It's bedtime" and kick off a routine? ) - and im also looking to hear if anyone else has had success with this and young kids?  

Answer 1

We have Hue for our house. My older son likes his room pitch black, while a younger son likes a little light. What works best for us is that we bought the Hue light strip and put it behind the backboard of his bed. It makes beautiful indirect light and you can completely adjust the color temperature and of course intensity. The Hue dimmer at the entrance to his doorway is set to go on full intensity on the first press and get lower with each additional press. But I have a second Hue dimmer that I attached right to his bed for nighttime use. The first press turns off all the lights except for the light strip and each subsequent press turns on different combinations of the light strip and the room lights and gets brighter. This is really helpful to set his lights each night, or to increase it slightly if I need to get up to get him something.  

Answer 2

I use tp link kasa smart bulbs with a DH work perfectly with ST and no need for a hue hub ,  

Answer 3

I do this with an inovelli rgbw bulb in a lamp. Turns on pink at 715pm and dims down to 20% over 45mins. Turns green at 715am and fades up to 100% over 10mins and then turns off at 730. It can also be manually triggered on or off through the config button on an inovelli switch

Answer 4

I have this set up with the hue lamp, coming directly from Hatch with my 2 year old. It responds much faster and we typically have Google control it as we go to her room. There is some automation to go into the modes automatically, just set up through the hue app. Granted I haven't set up anything to make it fade to the colors over time

Answer 5

You can do what you describe without Hue too. It's definitely a nice system, but very costly. You can use a wide number of ST compatible color bulbs if you wanted.  

Answer 6

We have Hue bulbs and dimmer switches in the kids rooms - once they get bored with playing with the switches, we find they are a good way to get them to sleep with the lights dimmed (our 4 year old was scared of the dark so it helped). I've not got any routines running as they don't work well with young kids - too much to go wrong and things never go to plan of an evening/morning. One room has a colour bulb - the novelty wore off after a few days.